


Good

by HalandMayFTW



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, I am not much of a Sherlock fan, Spitefic, but I'm a sucker for these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 19:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3621327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalandMayFTW/pseuds/HalandMayFTW
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally enjoys those days where she can just sit and have her coffee in peace. Talk to Anderson a bit. Those days are harder to find, now, and Sally hates the reason why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little fic I came up with while rewatching the first episode. This takes place between Seasons One and Two. I hope you all enjoy it.

That day, London was vibrant. The sun had just come up and was peeking out from its usual place behind the clouds; the city was getting its first good bit of light in weeks. Crowds of people had managed to find their ways out of doors and a good few were making their way to St. James Park a few streets over, mostly families with little kids.

Not an overwhelming amount of persons filled the sidewalks outside the café, thankfully. Just enough to make people-watching interesting and few enough to cause minimal hassle when exiting the shops. While several women and men, young and old and in various states of casual-Saturday dress, gazed at the passers-by or were absorbed with their coffees, one young woman watched the arriving crowd with mild anxiety.

Sergeant Sally Donovan was absentmindedly deconstructing the flaky croissant on her plate. Her hair was pinned back with a few of those plastic-toothed clips that were always scattered around her bedroom, and she was beginning to regret her decision to wear sweatpants that morning. So warm out, and at only—what time was it? She glanced at the phone in her lap for the twelfth time since sitting down—at only eight in the morning, too. Donovan sighed, taking a tentative sip of her too-hot coffee and checking her cellphone again.

_We said eight, right?_

The shredding of the unfortunate breakfast increased in fervor as her stomach suddenly twisted. What if she got the time wrong? Or what if he meant eight _tomorrow_? Anderson’d asked her so _late_ yesterday. She’d been on-duty for twenty-two hours, working on the newest investigation. She’d been exhausted. Could she have heard some detail wrong before she said yes? Why wasn’t he answering his texts?

Maybe there was trouble with the wife. There was usually trouble with the wife. That was sometimes why he couldn’t get to crime scenes on time—Donovan would always cover for him, bring up the paperwork to distract Lestrade, make sure he wasn’t needed ‘till he got there. She leaned her chin against her hand, sighing through her nose this time. Was it terrible that she didn’t like Mrs. Anderson? She’d met the woman at some Yard ceremony a few years before, before everything happened between her and him. The Mrs. and Mr. hardly talked, except for some remarks that just led to frustrated, confused looks on his part, and numerous counts of eye-rolling on hers.

Donovan had been the first and only person he’d ever told about his wife’s policeman in Dartford. He’d apparently known for a year or so, but the woman never knew he did. Donovan didn’t remember much of that night in the pub, but what she could recall had started with a feeling of overwhelming pity for the poor man and ended in a blur of alcohol and lust. She’d woken up the next morning at his flat, where both soundly refused to look at one another as she got dressed and all but ran out the door.

She’d managed to find enough ways to reason herself out of that particular sin to make it negligible, in her opinion. The second time, though…

Or the third…

Donovan blinked resignedly at the pile of crumbs that had been her breakfast. There were no excuses for her after that. No defenses. But she really couldn’t deny that Anderson was one of her closest friends, her best confidant, all things considering, and she felt little remorse. It wasn’t like his wife was ever home to talk to him, or to love him.

Her head snapped up as the little bell over the café door rang gleefully. She couldn’t stop the elated grin that appeared on her face, but she managed to fight it back just as Anderson sat down at the chair opposite her. Warm excitement was doing some dizzying cartwheels in her chest. Nevertheless, she rearranged her smile into a stern glance that was an extreme struggle to maintain.

“You’re seventeen minutes late.” she said sternly, arching an eyebrow.

“Don’t tell me you were counting.” he gave a weak smile, and, just like that, her façade broke. She was beaming and grinning like an idiot, she knew, but it seemed impossible not to. At least, until she noticed that he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

“Didn’t y’go home to change or something…?” she trailed off as she took in the packets of papers he had dropped on the table when he sat down, the dark rings beneath his eyes, his unbrushed hair…

He shrugged and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Didn’t have a chance.”

“What were—you were on-duty for near’s long as me! And I didn’t leave ‘till near midnight!” Donovan reached for one of the stacks of paper. “What the hell were you _doing_ for that long?”

“I was in the lab.”

“You were the lab when I went to say good-night, too. We’re all working overtime, just not that long…” she flipped through the top sheets and frowned. “The Evans case? I thought Lestrade filed the report for that last week.”

“It doesn’t go up for trial ‘till next _month_. My department’s still trying to consolidate evidence,” Anderson said tiredly, resting his chin on his hand. “We can’t find anything, Sally.”

Donovan scanned each page with narrowed eyes, her frown deepening. “There’s a whole list of evidence here. Anyways, didn’t _he_ use a lot of this to catch the guy? The cousin did it, right?”

As she mentioned ‘he’, the dark-haired man glared at the table. “Yeah, and we would’ve been able to solve that case without him. You see what’s next to the list?”

She glanced to the right margin of the page, noticing that they all had the same four letters scrawled next to them in scratchy writing—Anderson’s writing.

“I-N-E-V,” she said. Her eyes flashed to his face as she struggled to recall the meaning from the forensics jargon. “…Invalid evidence?”

He nodded.

“All of it?” she asked quietly.

Almost another nod. “Nearly all.”

Donovan was getting quite concerned. “How’d this happen? We all use the proper precautions, I _personally_ rope off the scene. _Your_ whole team goes overboard on the anti-contamination gear like you taught them…”

Anderson yawned before answering. “…It’s up to me to keep the actual scene clean. Unfortunately, our D.I. doesn’t have the same respect for my work.”

“You never let Lestrade on the scene unless he’s wearing the basics. And he kinda just stands around anyway, doesn’t he?”

“Lestrade’s not the problem. It’s the people he calls in.”

Realization clicked in her brain, and her fingers tightened on the edge of the page. “You’re talking about Holmes, aren’t you.”

It wasn’t a question.

The forensic investigator took the packet from Donovan, holding it so they both could see the list of evidence. She felt a strange sense of foreboding as she regarded the rows and rows of rejected samples. Anderson pointed to the first set.

“This was a series of fibers taken from the victim’s shirt. They didn’t match the fabric that the body was wearing. We look at the scene photoset evidence Mason gave me for the consolidation. Two different locations for the fibers, before our collection, and we find we can’t use it in the trial,” he shook his head, a new, grim energy seeming to wake him up. “The fibers were moved, Sally. That, and there was cross-contamination from some kind of blue fabric that wasn’t there in the beginning.”

“Freak’s scarf,” Donovan’s brow furrowed. “Lestrade never said anything to him about why he can’t wear it at scenes.”

“Exactly. You’ve been to the training. You know about trace evidence, how it’s all the really small fibers that get lost _incredibly_ easily. He comes in, moves things around, fibers fall off, he gets some of his all over the scene.” he rubbed his eyes. “Doesn’t happen every single time, but a pretty high percentage. Too high.”

“Is this why—”

“—Why we have one of the lowest conviction rates out of all the other regional departments? Yes.” he leaned back in his chair, stared out the window as he spoke the next part slowly. “And the infallible consulting detective’s gotten to requesting that I leave the room where the scene is. Says he ‘can’t concentrate’ because of me.”

“And Lestrade just…lets him?” she asked, incredulous. “I know there was that one time at his flat, but the scenes—you’re supposed to be there! I do border control, you do evidence, and Lestrade supervises! That’s—that’s breaking the bloody protocol. You’re the overseer for the scene. There’s no way that’s legal!”

Anderson gave her an ‘I-don’t-know-what-to-tell-you” look, before staring back out to the street. Donovan felt a pang of inexplicable guilt as she studied the dark circles rimming his eyes. She hated seeing him like this, exhausted and on the point of giving up. It reminded her of all the times he had shown up at her flat at three in the morning after fighting for hours with his wife. The same defeated, dissatisfied look that only seemed to lift when he uncovered something in the lab or when Sally laughed at something he said, like those two things were the only parts of his life where he managed to have any modicum of success. And now, with Lestrade’s growing dependence on Sherlock—honestly, the majority of the cases were just ones the D.I. didn’t want to focus on too much—the forensic analyst was losing control there, too.

Sally suddenly felt a surge of hatred in her gut for the interfering detective. His presence at these scenes was going _beyond_ professional. Hell, it was _personal_. Sherlock had no respect for either of their jobs. It was all the case for him, wasn’t it, just wanted to get off on showing his skills to anyone who would listen. He didn’t care about putting the criminals behind bars.  Anderson—one of Donovan’s only real friends—his livelihood, his happiness was just collateral damage to Holmes. Sherlock didn’t respect him, or Sally, or Lestrade, or anyone. ‘Cept for maybe the doctor he led around everywhere. And it hardly screamed ‘respect’ when he just up and left the doctor behind at the scene. Sally realized that her hands were clenched into fists, the frustration just building and building and trying to tear its way through _something_. Finally, she slammed a hand down on the table, nearly upsetting her coffee in the process.

“I’m taking this to Lestrade.” she said flatly.

“Sally…” he began.

“What? You think he won’t listen again? Even when it’s something like this?” Donovan frowned when Anderson shrugged again. “Then we’ll take it past that. He’s on holiday right now. We’d be able to pop out, arrange a meeting with someone…”

“I _have_ filed reports with Lestrade about this,” he rubbed at his eyes again, and Sally pushed her coffee across the table. He smiled gratefully and took it. “It’s all that he’s convinced we need Sherlock, that my skill set ‘isn’t enough anymore’ even though the conviction rate was higher when his little detective wasn’t around. Say what you want, but cases get solved faster now. It’s good press.”

“Who got him thinkin’ you weren’t enough?”

“Guess.”

Donovan blinked exactly four times before answering, suddenly aware of an acute need to begin smashing through the café walls and rolling right on down to a certain flat on Baker Street. “He’s been saying bad things about you to Lestrade. What sort of fucked-up _reason_ does he have, what _right_? _You’re_ the professional here, not _him_!”

The dark-haired man looked at her over the lid of the coffee cup, drank, and set it down again, frowning. “God, that’s practically boiling,” he pulled off the plastic lid, watching passively as a large amount of steam drifted away. “He says worse things about you. _To_ you.”

“Yeah, and that’s to me. Not to my boss.”

“I see what it does to you, though,” he said. “He goes on about you to me, pretending you’re not even there. Uses your first name like he doesn’t want to recognize your position…”

“You notice that too, do you?” she laughed, though she didn’t find it funny. “What, and you never said anything?”

“I didn’t know it was bothering you at first. You never say anything to him.”

“Because I don’t think it’s worth it. I’m the Sergeant, and I got the badge; he’s some up-jumped little boy with a superiority complex and a need to make inappropriate jokes. So I’ll humor him. I’m not a stranger to it.”

Anderson looked scandalized. “You shouldn’t need to do that. You’re on the job, and he shoves past you to get on the scene before _dehumanizing_ you in front of your coworkers. In front of _me_.”

“I wouldn’t be a very good Sergeant if I couldn’t handle some would-be detective calling me a whore, would I?”

“You’re a very good Sergeant—the best. It’s—it’s just that he shouldn’t be saying those things,” he appeared to be struggling for words. “’S not just rude. It’s unprofessional—inappropriate—”

She held up a hand. “And I can handle it. It’s not any worse than what I’ve had to deal with before. You don’t need to defend me; I know.”

He sighed in resignation, then reached over to grab a piece of croissant off her forgotten plate. “He’s just…what’s his point, anyway?” he said, popping it in his mouth. “What’s he getting off on?”

“He likes feeling above the rest of us commoners, yeah?” she smiled wryly, and pushed the plate towards him, too. The topic had already ruined her appetite.

Anderson didn’t smile back. “It’s scary, is what it is. He jumps around and gets all excited over people getting killed. The messier, the better for him, it’s like. You’ve heard Lestrade talk about it, too. Holmes gets _bored_ with simple murders. If you ask me, it’s not too long ‘till…”

“…he starts trying it out himself, I know,” Donovan finished. “He had eyes in his microwave, remember? Takes ‘em from the morgue, practically stealing from the med school. Don’t like to remember his fridge. Like a horror story.” She shuddered.

“Like what we find in the flats of serial killers.” he said.

They fell silent then, each taking a sip of coffee before staring impassively out the window. A pair of girls walked by, hand in hand, and Donovan felt a pang of nostalgia for her university days. Things had been easier fifteen years before. There’d been no drama with her internships and all the youthful idealism of a new police recruit flowed from her like a river. She hadn’t been the only woman in her training, either, and there had been so many good things about all of them. Good things about all women and men and in-betweens. The bad guys were clearly defined and they went to jail, plain as that. _How things change in this weird, weird world._

Sally wondered when she’d become so jaded. Probably shortly before criminal masterminds started playing games with people’s lives (how could you see someone’s life as something you could just toss away?) and free-lance ‘detectives’ started butting in to make the cases all about them (people aren’t just collateral for your invented puzzles, you sick, sick man). It was depressing to suddenly have no control over the safety of the people. That’s why she’d started this job, yeah? She wanted to protect. Pure, naïve, and simple.

She looked over at Anderson, who was staring out into the street. He’d shared that idealism, too. It was complicated and it felt hopeless sometimes, but she felt like he’d never really lost that fervor. He could be sarcastic, and sometimes blunt, but he was not a cynical person at heart. Sally needed that reminder, that maintaining hope in this job and their work wasn’t completely futile. It gave her security. And she was thankful. To him.

He smiled at her when she reached over to take his hand from where it rested on the table. Sally traced her thumb over his knuckles, trying to reassure him. That he would find some sort of evidence that could be admissible in court. That she would be with him every step of the way. That no one could take his job away from him. He was irreplaceable.

He was a very good Forensic Analyst. And she was a very good Sergeant. They would find a way.

“Let’s get you home,” she said. “You need to sleep.”


End file.
